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This is the home page of the Belfast Science Fiction Group – also known as The Monico meeting. On this site you’ll find details of our meetings, location of the pub and directions to get there. In addition will be images of the regular attendees, plus some pictures of past members and peripatetic attendees. This should help you spot us if you come to the meeting fresh.

In addition there are some copies of our erstwhile newsletter, articles written by group members about conventions attended as well as other activities. Other details will be added in due course, including additions to our Links list and more stuff as it becomes available.

If you’d like to come along to a meeting, find out more information about the group or contact some of the regular members, click on the contact us button.

We’re a new mag, looking for stories especially from new writers. We need one more story for our first edition (due out in April 2015), but will open straight away after that slot is filled for our second edition. We want SF, Steampunk and Horror up to 5000 words, and reviews. Our website is:

Hi trying to find contact details to let you know of an event in Belfast Waterstones on Thu 14th may which may be of interest to your members.

on 06 May 2015 at 5:48 pm#3Monico

Hi Michael

you can reply to me here if you wish. I’d be interested to know what event you have coming up

cheers

eugene

on 10 May 2015 at 2:03 pm#4Monico

From Waterstone’s FB page
Like the Universe, our Sci Fi night this Thursday 14th May just keeps on expanding. As well as Jo Zebedee launching her debut novel ‘ Abendau’s Heir’, special guests The Green Hornet, Kato and at least one Jedi Knight courtesy of Emerald Garrison, we are now joined by William Long, author of the acclaimed ‘Timecrack’ series. Beaming down time is 19.00 hours(7pm to us civilians) and refreshments are free.https://www.facebook.com/pages/Waterstones-Belfast/138147399531968?fref=nf

on 28 Aug 2015 at 6:07 am#5Ryan Wade

Hello I am just wondering how can I join up? I have been looming for a group like this and also means more people to enjoy my full size dalek. Plz email me if you can.

I’ve written a book which I hope will be of interest to the members of your society.

The book is sci-fi (but no bug-eyed monsters getting zapped with laser guns) and is set in an age when mind transfer technology is well developed and available as a service to allow people to travel instantaneously from one world to another by moving their life-force into a rented body at their destination. The story features Jon Chandler, formerly a successful businessman and now an ambitious government minister with his eyes firmly set on the Union’s top job who has to travel to the newly discovered planet Phoenix. Unfortunately for Jon he was born as a member of a rare mind type group and the only compatible host available is female. He absolutely hates the idea but he knows that if he chickens out it will be the end of his high flying political career.

Somehow the book doesn’t quite fit into any established sub-genre. It’s a “riches to rags with a twist” story combined with a look into how a man (an ultra-straight alpha-male type of man) gets to grips with his enforced occupation of a female body (an occupation that ends up going on for a while longer than he’d originally hoped).

Female 22 is only the first book in the TranzCon series and I have plans to write another three or even four. As the story progresses Jon comes more and more to terms with the life that circumstances have forced on him, until he’s finally become she and is happy with her role in society. And that’s when I dump him back into a male body! Throughout the series Jon occupies a total of six bodies, three male and three female. In the end he reaches the point where, like Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind, he/she simply doesn’t give a damn.

Free, Gratis and For Nothing

If you’d like a copy of Female 22 I can post you a print copy, I can email the mobi file to read on a Kindle, or you can help yourself to a free download on the book’s launch date of 7 November and each subsequent Saturday in November (and please, tell all your friends. The more people who read the book the better).

What’s the catch? There is no catch. You will not find you’ve enrolled in a scam where you’re now obliged to buy the next four books at £19.99 each. Unlike double glazing salesmen, no-one will call. Unlike payment protection insurance, no-one will keep on ringing you from withheld numbers. I’d like you to post a review, but if you’d prefer not to it’s enough just to know you read the book.

Reviews are Everything

I’ve set myself a target and it’s something that’s realistic. My goal is to get 100 reviews on Amazon. That’s it – just 100. If ten people in your group read Female 22 and post a review, I’ll be 10% of the way towards my dream. Ten societies like yours have the power to launch a new author, so I’m making a huge plea for everyone to post a review when they’ve read the book.

A Funny Thing Happened

As part of my efforts to find “traditional publishing” representation I sent an email to Ann Leckie’s agent telling him (quite truthfully) how much better Female 22 is than Ancillary Justice. The reply I got back accused me of insulting his client. What would you bet that if I’d referred to the USA as a foreign country he’d have been equally insulted?

TranzCon. Travel by the transfer of consciousness. This is a mind transfer service which enables the rich and powerful to travel instantaneously across the galaxy to worlds so remote that travel by star-liner would take years. The traveller rents a host on the target world and transfers into their body for a period of up to 20 days (complications can set in if the transfer is for longer).

Mind Types. It was discovered in the early days of mind transference that the members of the human race are split into a number of different and mostly incompatible mind-types. The numerous Alphas can always find an Alpha host at their destination. Betas are smaller in number but they still run into billions. Gammas are counted in billions but unfortunately most of them live on a single planet. Then come the Deltas. The more numerous Delta1 sub-group has members counted in thousands. Jon Chandler is a Delta2: by modern standards he’s a mental leper.

The Story. When Jon is called upon to represent the Union’s First Minister at the accession conference on distant Phoenix he has no option other than to travel by TranzCon. But he has a problem, with his rare mind type it’s difficult to find hosts, especially at short notice. Difficult but not impossible. When the eminently suitable candidate the company selected for him is killed in a bizarre ritual murder he’s desperate to find another. But who? Time is running out and Jon’s political career hangs in the balance. Just when all seems to be lost a new host turns up, Miss Jana Kell (aged 22). Jon is horrified at the thought of swapping bodies with a female, but he knows that unless makes a success of this mission he’ll be clearing his desk next morning. Anyway, it’s only until the weekend, and what could possibly go wrong?

But things do go wrong. The beam which carries interstellar communications fails leaving Jon’s mind stranded on Phoenix in Jana’s body. After a week there’s still hope it will be back on line any day soon. As weeks turn into months the hopes Jon once had begin to fade.

With a vindictive policeman chasing the temporary occupant of the body for a crime his host committed Jon is in a fix. One outcome is he’ll be sent to jail for years, the other is he’ll be locked up in the secure wing of a mental hospital, possibly for the rest of his host body’s life. In desperation he stows away on the Hyperion, a star-liner once owned by the shipping company he set up over 30 years ago. If he can get to the planet Darius he’ll be able to TranzCon home from there and resume his high-flying career.

But even after two long years in space things still don’t turn out as Jon had hoped. The news he receives is devastating. And at that stage there’s still another 100 pages to go and I don’t want to spoil the rest of the story for you.

Is Female 22 An Excuse For An Intergalactic Sex Romp? Definitely no! The book has a strong transgender element and I most certainly could have written it as a sex romp. But that was never my intention. Without doubt there is sex in the book, both straight and lesbian, but the number of pages given over to these activities is no more than a handful. Instead the book tells a story that is exciting and thought provoking with many unexpected twists and turns as the beleaguered Jon battles to regain his freedom.